BEER: Finally, Government Loves You And Wants You To Be Happy

MOST Americans may not realise it, but their country is a little
freer, and perhaps slightly tipsier than it was last month. On
July 1st it became legal to make beer at home in Mississippi.
Alabama lifted the threat of prosecution for homebrewers in May.
It is now legal to craft your own suds in all 50 states.

Benjamin Franklin is said (probably apocryphally) to have called
beer "proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy". Jimmy
Carter signed a law exempting home-made beer from excise tax in
1978, in effect legalising homebrewing at the federal level. But
it has taken 35 years for the most puritanical states to swallow
the bitter pils of legalisation. Outfits such as the American
Homebrewers Association (AHA) have been lobbying state
legislatures to loosen up for decades. It took five years of
legislative ferment to get the law changed in Alabama, for
example.

Opponents have an image of "an old country guy back in the woods"
says Richard Force, an avid homebrewer in Alabama. In fact, Mr
Force is a data analyst for a medical technology firm. He
recently won "best in show" at a Mississippi homebrewing
competition, he notes, for a smoked beer with "a wonderful,
roasted ham flavour".

Craig Hendry, the head of a pressure group called "Raise Your
Pints", has been homebrewing illegally in Mississippi for the
past 12 years. He agrees that the hobby attracts "a different
group of people from the regular Miller Bud Coors drinkers". They
are not in it to save money, Mr Force says: "If you just wanted
to drink beer, it would be much cheaper to buy a 30-pack of Natty
Light at the supermarket." He reckons he spends about $1,500 a
year on his habit, though he insists that he seldom drinks more
than one beer a day. Travelling to contests costs money.

It was the economic arguments, both men agree, that won over
wavering legislators. Many homebrewers ultimately set up shop
commercially. Jefferson County, home to Birmingham, Alabama's
biggest city, had only one brewery in 2008, Mr Force notes; there
are three now, with another two in the hopper, as it were. Given
that the county declared bankruptcy two years ago, the extra
revenue these new ventures bring in is as intoxicating to local
officials as their wares are to patrons.

But homebrewers' long stagger to freedom is not yet complete. For
one thing, it remains illegal to make your own beer in the "dry"
counties of many states, including Alabama and Mississippi. And
even in places where homebrewing is legal, a host of subsidiary
regulations still gum up the taps, points out Gary Glass of AHA.
There are often limits on how much you can brew, where you can
consume your handiwork, whom you can serve it to and so on. Idaho
even insists that homebrewers use only ingredients grown within
the state. It is possible, it turns out, to make beer from those
famous potatoes.